The Best Learning Spanish Methods - Discover the Best Ways to Learn Spanish

Every program for learning Spanish – whether a book tutorial, an audio course or a software platform – is based on certain learning method.

A learning method is a set of principles (or approaches), which is intended to:

• “Deliver” Spanish language to you – vocabulary, phraseology, pronunciation, grammar
• Suggest a reasonable way for memorizing and learning Spanish words, phrases and grammar rules
• Help and guide you how to apply Spanish in your practice

Our goal is not to present here ALL the existing approaches for learning Spanish.

We introduce you just the most popular methods used for language teaching and learning.

• School method: how Spanish is made difficult to learn
• Direct method: an effective way to learn conversational Spanish
• Situational approach: a natural way to talking Spanish in real-like situations
• Language immersion: how to speak Spanish by no English at all
  Audio-lingual approach: a remarkable way to success in talking Spanish
• Pimsleur method – an amazingly powerful way for learning Spanish
• Suggestopedia: learn to speak Spanish through mindgames

Except the school method, all the other methods are widely used for developing conversational skills in Spanish – listening and talking, including pronunciation. These methods are embedded in the most popular Spanish learning programs available on the market – textbooks, audio recordings and software tools.

Not only the methods however are important, what also matters is the form of their implementation. Traditional Spanish learning methods, like the school method, rely on books and textbooks. It’s normal because learning is centered mostly around grammar, and any grammar rules can be best explained in a written form.

This is not valid however for conversational Spanish, where book plays much a minor role. The stress is laid on listening and speaking. You cannot develop your listening and talking skills by reading textbooks and writing down the exercises.

It is impossible, for example, to simulate successfully the environment of language immersion just by using books and audio. Immersion is strongly related with visual memory, so there is no wonder that Rosetta Stone offers great utilities for all visual Spanish learners.

What is more, software tools are the most proper application of language immersion, as they combine text, picture, audio and video to form an integrated comfortable environment for Spanish study.

Certainly audio-lingual approach makes the use of audio recordings obligatory. This audio set however could go along with a reference book.
Situational approach is the most universal one.

It goes well with books, audio recordings and software tools. It’s universal also because you can develop all kinds of language skills – listening, speaking, reading and writing. Probably for these two reasons the greatest number of Spanish language learning programs available are based exactly on this method.

Rosetta Stone, one of the most popular Spanish learning software tutorials, is based on the direct method and language immersion approach.

The Pimsleur course is a typical and widely recognized representative of audio-lingual approach.

Other good programs for learning Spanish are Rocket Spanish, Synergy Spanish, Visual Link Spanish and Fluenz. All of them are predominantly based on situational method of learning conversational Spanish. The first two are sets of audio lessons, while the second two are software platforms.